In the latest rumor regarding the next generation HTC One device, currently known as the Hima or the M9 but referred to as the 0PJA10 on the Geekbench results database website. Today I’m bringing you the Geekbench 3 results as reported by the website. However, as I’ll come to write I’m not convinced that we are seeing the final device, or whoever running the test deliberately hobbled the One. This is for a couple of reasons, first being the relatively low score of the M9 and second being the relatively low clock speed reported. Geekbench 3 reported a single core result of 1,241 and a multicore result of 3,521, approximately 20% greater than the current HTC flagship device, the One M8. However, these results are some way lower than the previously reported results for the up and coming Samsung Exynos 7420 chipset, which showed as 1,520 and 5,478 for single and multi-core results respectively.

As regards the silicon under the 0PJA10’s hood, this mostly taps the “as expected” button as it’s an octa core Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 containing the Afternoon 430 GPU and backed up by 3 GB of RAM. It looks as though it was the higher efficiency, lower performance Cortex-A53 that was used in the test target than the high-powered, Cortex-A57. This explains why the device had a reported clock speed of 1.55 GHz. The device was also running Android 5.0.2 and although not confirmed by the Geekbench report, I would hope that it was also running HTC Sense 7.

From my own personal perspective, I always take benchmark results with a pinch of salt, especially when they’re tests on prototype, unreleased hardware. I’m not discouraged by the HTC results looking slower than other prototype handsets, especially given how manufacturers like to “tune” their devices when running benchmarking software to flatter the results. I’ve also found that a small difference at the time of benchmarking equates to no discernable difference at the device end, especially after it’s been used for a year and contains third party applications, accounts and data. After a period of use, our devices are as unique as we are. What is interesting is how the test appeared to use the slower Cortex-A53 processor cores; perhaps the device was running in Power Saving mode? Or perhaps the high-performance Cortex-A57 cores have been disabled in the prototype because the Snapdragon 810 was not ready and was prone to overheating?

HTC are set to announce the new One on March 1st, so we’ll find out then what’s under the hood, the screen size and resolution, camera, battery and the other information that’s missing from the Geekbench 3 database. We’ll keep you in the loop but meanwhile, what are your opinions on this relatively low benchmark figure? Let us know in the comments below.